A city of Denver employee who was among the 171 laid off amid Mayor Mike Johnston’s efforts to plug a $250 million hole in the city’s budget alleges she was targeted over a lawsuit she filed against the mayor earlier this year.

Jessica Calderon, who served as director of operations and innovation in the Mayor’s Office of Social Equity & Innovation, alleges she and other city employees have been “deliberately targeted” as the city sheds workers this week to remedy its looming budget woes.

In her lawsuit filed on June 3 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, Calderon is suing the Office of the Mayor and her former boss, Denver Chief Equity Officer Ben Sanders.

Citing political retaliation in violation of the First Amendment and sex discrimination, Calderon alleges that she was denied promotions that were given to male colleagues and that Sanders repeatedly confronted her about her connection to Latinos United Neighbors Association and its founder, Lisa Calderón, who ran against Johnston in the 2023 mayoral race.

The two women are not related. In July, just weeks before layoffs were set to begin, the city’s Career Services Board approved changes to Career Service (CS) Rule 14, which deals with layoff procedures to better reflect the mayor’s policy shift changing the focus from seniority to job performance.

Opponents argue the change is “insulting” and it creates opportunities for managers to “eliminate critics and rivals.”

With those changes, the city must apply four factors — job performance, skills, abilities, and seniority — when evaluating employees for layoff.

As a 21-year employee of the city, Calderon’s attorney said, she would have benefited from the matrix, including the seniority factor.

Calderon alleges that didn’t happen.

“There was a lot of information that came from HR and the (Johnston) administration about how fair it (the layoff process) was going to be by applying that rubric,” Calderon said. “And what we can see by employees with 10-to-15 years of service being let go is that they chose not to use that rubric.”

For decades, the city’s rules have “long placed a heavy emphasis on seniority, using a ‘ last in, first out’ method of making layoff decisions,” a source not authorized to speak publicly on the matter told The Denver Gazette.

The old rules, the source said, fueled the perception that government is ineffective. By allowing agency heads to not only consider seniority in firing decisions, it would help the city attract and retain the best talent, the source said.

“We’re not aware of any city — in recent memory — who has taken the brave and bold step to push back against employee unions and entrenched political interests to update their seniority system to match the needs of this moment,” the source said. “Denver and Mayor Johnston did this week — and they should be commended for it.”

Johnston’s office declined comment Tuesday.

During Monday’s City Council meeting, several council members expressed concern for those who lost their jobs and how the layoffs have been conducted, citing Johnston’s “lack of transparency.”

District 11 Councilmember Stacie Gilmore’s husband was among the 171 city employees who received layoff notices, and stated that she believes it, too, was retaliatory in nature.

“I’m deeply troubled and worried that this (layoffs) isn’t about our values,” District 7 Councilmember Flor Alvidrez said. “We should have waited for the budget conversation, which is only a month away, to discuss these issues with the city workers. I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more. I’m sorry that the City Council didn’t get a vote on this, and that we didn’t get our voices heard either.”